Looking across the landscape of contemporary culture

Celibacy and the Catholic priesthood

Celibacy is in the air again. Or rather, Cardinal O’Brien’s recent comments have stirred up a debate about the obligation of celibacy for Catholic priests in the Western Church.

I thought I’d copy here a personal reflection on celibacy, and then some historical notes. The personal reflection is from something I wrote for the BBC News website three years ago; and the historical sections are copied from a recent post by Fr Tim Finigan.

This is the short piece I wrote for the BBC:

On 13 July 1997 I made a lifelong commitment to celibacy. In a chapel overlooking Lake Albano on the outskirts of Rome I promised to remain unmarried ‘for the sake of the kingdom and in lifelong service to God and mankind’.

I had a real sense of peace that day, but a few months earlier I had been in turmoil. I knew all the theory: Catholic priests were following the example of Christ; celibacy gave you a freedom to serve others, etc. But it hadn’t become real for me.

I was wrestling with all this one afternoon that spring. I realised that I had been seeing celibacy in negative terms: ‘No’ to marriage, ‘No’ to sex, ‘No’ to children – when in reality it was a profound ‘Yes’. It was a way of putting Christ at the centre of your life, of giving your whole heart to those you would serve as a priest. It was a way of loving others with a generosity that wouldn’t be possible if you were a husband and father. Celibacy wasn’t a negation or a denial – it was a gift of love, a giving of oneself, just as much as marriage could be.

My experience over the years has confirmed this. Yes, there are practical aspects to celibacy. You’ve got more time for other people, and more time for prayer. You can get up at three in the morning to visit someone in hospital without worrying about how this will affect your marriage. You can move to a bleak estate in a rough part of town without thinking about how this will impact on your children’s schooling.

But celibacy is something much deeper as well. There is a place in your heart, in your very being, that you have given to Christ and to the people you meet as a priest. You are not just serving them, you are loving them as if they were the very centre of your life – which they are. I think Catholics sense this. They know that you are there for them with an undivided heart, and it gives your relationship with them a particular quality.

It’s true that you can’t speak from experience about every aspect of human life. But you gain an awful lot of understanding from sharing in people’s lives over the years. Husbands and wives will confide in a sympathetic priest. You end up drawing on this experience as you preach and counsel people. Besides, people want a priest because he will show them the love of Christ, and not because he has lived through all ups and downs that they live through.

There are struggles. Times of loneliness; sexual desires; dreams about what marriage and fatherhood would be like. I don’t think most of this is about celibacy – it’s about being human. The husbands I know struggle with the same things, only they dream about what it would be like to have married someone else! What matters is trying to be faithful, instead of pretending that another way of life would be easy.

You need balance in your life, you can’t be giving all the time – this was emphasised in our training. You need affection and human intimacy. I’ve got some wonderful friends. I get home to see my family every couple of weeks. I escape to the cinema now and then. And I pray. Not to fill the gaps, because some of them can never be filled, but because the love of Christ is something very real and very consoling.

I’ve been incredibly happy as a priest over these twelve years. I don’t think about celibacy a lot now – it’s just part of my life. But I’m aware that it gives me a freedom of heart that is a unique gift. It helps me stay close to Christ, and draws me closer to the people I meet each day.

In the synoptic gospels we hear of how Our Lord cured Simon Peter’s mother-in-law from fever. In the discussion of clerical celibacy, this text is routinely brought out as a knock-down argument. The apostles were married so why can’t priests marry? Oddly, though, we never hear anything of St Peter’s wife, or indeed of any of the wives of the other apostles.

“Then Peter said: Behold, we have left all things, and have followed thee. Who said to them: Amen, I say to you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive much more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. (Lk 18.28-30)”

This suggests the possibility that St Peter had in fact left his family to follow the Lord. Such a course of action would be unacceptable in our time, but in the culture of Palestine in the time of Our Lord, the extended family would mean that it was possible.

Then we come to St Paul’s injunction in 1 Timothy 3.2 that the Bishop should be the husband of only one wife. It would be improbable to suggest that St Paul was dealing with a problem of polygamy. Much more likely he was saying that the Bishop should not be someone who had married a second wife after his first wife had died.

These indications from scripture are tantalising but need further illumination. Fortunately, there have been a number of studies that have cast light on the historical practice of the Church, arguing that the discipline of clerical celibacy is of apostolic origin.

Christian Cochini presented the historic debate between Bickell and Funk over certain key texts from the Council of Nicea, the Council of Elvira and others. He also exhaustively examined all of the cases from the first seven centuries of the Church’s history which were relevant to the issue of clerical marriage. His work supported the thesis that there was an apostolic rule of continence for those clerics who were married and that the legislation of the Church against the clerical use of marriage is witness to this ancient tradition.

Roman Cholij examined in particular the Council in Trullo of 691, concluding that the Council’s permission for the clerical use of marriage was an innovation, giving rise to the legislative anomaly in the East (and occasionally in the West) whereby married men may be ordained but ordained men may not marry. This law, which is still a part of modern codes of canon law, makes little sense apart from the historic rule of continence…

Cardinal Stickler’s brief account is a most useful summary of the case for clerical celibacy. He notes that there have been a number of important recent studies devoted to the history of celibacy in both the East and the West, and that these studies have either not yet penetrated the general consciousness or they have been hushed up if they were capable of influencing that consciousness in undesirable ways.

This unfortunately remains the case as articles continue to appear without finding it necessary even to address the research of these scholars.

The later imposition of a rule that clerics should be unmarried was a recognition of the growing impracticality, with the development of marriage, and the problems of inheritance, of ordaining men who had been previously married, even if there were a rule of continence. It obviously makes sense today when people would find it hard to understand a system in which men who are married would be expected to change and live a life of continence…

Throughout the history of the Church, the discipline of clerical continence or celibacy has been transgressed by some clerics. The Church has consistently fought to reform the life of clerics in the face of immorality which has been greater at some times than others. Today we live in a time when reform is needed again. We should remember that when St Charles Borrommeo went to Milan, the vast majority of his priests were living in concubinage – and he reformed his diocese. The Council of Trent was largely successful in reforming the clergy.

At the present time, we should give thanks for the faithfulness and purity of most students and young priests. They have been formed at a time when appallingly bad example has been given by some of their senior brethren. They have reckoned the cost and turned into the storm with courage and resolution. Let us pray that they become the vanguard of the new reform of the clergy, following in the footsteps of their forbears in the counter-reformation and at many other times in the history of the holy Roman Church.

References

Cholij, R. Clerical Celibacy in East and West Gracewing. Herefordshire. 1989

Celebacy is a fascinating subject. Your explanation of the need for celebacy among the priesthood was most revealing. Time to serve others rather than the moral justification of abstinance. I have always wondered how a celebate person trains to overcome ‘nature’ – the techniques employed by buddhist monks to build such disciplines is revealing. Among Hindus we have the great tradition of celebacy called Brahmacharya which is the art and science of celebacy practised by seers and sages in the remote Himalayas to meditate on the truth.Quite remarkable. Wish you success in your noble pursuits.

When people talk to me about the Church, the subject of Priestly celibacy frequently crops up. Your honest post here spoken from the heart answers a good deal of the things I’m asked.
Thanks Fr Stephen and God bless you.

Let’s take it as read that a ‘nuptial’ priestly celibacy represents the ideal. But what is the reality on the ground, as it were, of parish life? Why is it sometimes said that Catholics are sacramentalised rather than evangelised? It seems to me that the vivacity of a Christian community depends not only on individuals,’ (including the priest’s), relationship to Christ but on the liveliness of their relationships with one another. In family life we often see that it is the wife and mother of the family who brings a special quality of loving facilitation for the whole family. Parish life is no different in needing this feminine and maternal quality. Where a parish priest is able to collaborate with parishioners and colleagues in a way that draws in and together diverse gifts and complementary charisms, (including feminine and maternal ones), all is well. But when this is lacking, it seems to me, (my dad is a married catholic priest), that parishioners feel a greater sense of flourishing when led by a married man, supported by his wife, who together bring a quality of stable family warmth, inclusivity and outreach. Just to give one small example; when my parents were younger, (and admittedly the parishes were smaller), they would invite every parishioner over for dinner. I think that the Church needs to have a mind and heart for considering, in a self aware and honest way, how loving community is built.

Somehow arguments for celibacy, while often excellently presented, tend to ignore the reality of the number of married priests either in the non-Latin rites or coming from the Anglican churches and, by doing so and probably unwittingly, imply that these pastors are, in some way, incapable of providing as “good” as service as the celibate priest.

I commend all religious who want to live a happy single celibate life, I wish there were a choice for religious to marry as some of the ordinariate are. Two vocations equally as priestly with different gifts.

I am going to play the advocate. . . but not the devils, God’s.

We are made of Love, from Love, for Love.

If in the above argument we are using Peter’s marriage as an example and the apostles, then I would also like to use the women of Jesus’s intimate group as an example ‘who ministered unto them of their substance’. How many priests would allow a woman to rub oil into their skin, kiss their feet and bathe them in tears, and then allow them to be dried with her hair, to have their heads lovingly anointed with expensive oils and allow a woman to sit intimately close at their feet and listen to them share their day, as did Christ with Mary. And then relay that same display of authentic Love to His disciples by washing their feet at the last supper. Not many I do not think. But Jesus allowed it 2000 years ago, and if we are following His example to the rule then maybe we should in this too. Not a sin but a display of the greatest Love.

Hospital runs in the middle of the night and even husbands away on business are a part of everyday family life too, not just for priests, many families already live on that poor estate, why would that be a problem for a married ordinariate priests children? how beautifully humble, children soon grow up and leave the nest and what a Gospel ‘rich’ poor enviroment that would be. That richest Love as parents which brings us to truly Love others more than self, truly can be translated from across the vocations and life-long enrich both.

Either way Christ showed us that regardless of sexual encounter, intimately loving friendship is fundamental to living out the fullness of our humanity. Women and men inter-dependently bring a holistic richness to each other, to community together and as a family. And yet the priesthood is telling us other. What a better way than to have priests show us the true example that Jesus showed us, and left for us all 2,000 years ago with Mary 1 2 or 3, against the cultural norms of the day, rather than presenting us with the argument of the family man dreaming of other women.

Stephen I Love Christ with my whole being, and I Love people with my whole being. Being a parent has taught me to Love the many people I meet with a kindness and a Love, which gives myself to them so generously. I am not trying to take away from you your beautiful life-giving vocation or the celibacy which you believe makes it, which I think is wonderful, but I am challenging your presented argument for celibacy. If I felt the same celibate Love back from the priests I know, as the celibate Love I have given to others throughout my life, even as a married woman, then I would think the celibacy argument just. The Love I give to others now as a celibate woman has not changed in its capacity or generosity to what it was before I was celibate.

When I die I will first comfort and appear to the person I Love the most in the world, and I would trust that person with my whole heart to pass on the miracle of my resurrection. Celibate or not, God calls us all to intimate encounter. Such a sadness if God bestowed friendship is denied because we cannot embrace Jesus’ example.

I think Madge makes a number of very good points and I agree as regards the wherabouts of a clerical household. Until I was 11 we were in a poor area; round the corner from a garage that had links to the Kray twins. There is also much conjecture about the married priest being away from his family. Quite the opposite is the reality. Family meal times were at 6pm and my dad carried out his evening engagements afterwards. Lunch was also usually together at home for my parents. They were both remarkably ‘present’ throughout my childhood; a blessing that I have always recognised. As a child I used to feel very sorry for the mothers of my friends whose dads I knew to be away ‘at the office’ all day long.

I have thought over night about Simon Peters mother in law being healed, a miracle mention. Christ choosing a married man to hold the keys to Heaven, a married man who could not divorce.

Peters wife may not be mentioned, and she was his wife, but the miracle of his mother-in-law, was in clarity a God inspired statement which can not be denied. . . . think now of the other women in the group who were named by name for the importance of their ministry, in a time when women were not exulted.

My uncle was a celibate all his life and a Catholic priest. He was also the finest man I have ever known. I say that to show that in telling the following story I have very great respect for the vocation of celibacy. Many of the finest people I have known have been celibate.

When recently visiting a Catholic parish a long way from where I live I was surprised and a little shocked when a parishioner turned to me and said (I paraphrase a little): ‘Thank God we now have a married priest. He is so much more balanced than his predecessors’.

I would strongly encourage everyone to continue praying for all the priests and religious men and women–for the strength to be faithful to their calling. Also whatever pain or trials we encounter, offer them for this intention. My prayers for all of you.

The BBC website of 5 March 2013 has picked up on Fr Wang’s comments, perhaps because Cardinal O’Brien’s comments on celibacy were subsequently overwhelmed by events.
The BBC article is entitled ‘Is it even possible to live a celibate life?’. Fr Wang is quoted as saying (among other things) that “masturbation is forbidden”. He says it is forbidden not only to the priest who has taken a vow of celibacy, but to every Catholic. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this too, albeit not quite so bluntly.
Prayer is indeed needed.

I suspect I am somewhat late to comment here.
I have read the above and the bbc website article.I continue to be totally bemused by the attitudes here.
Masturbation is a sin,did’nt see that one in Christ’s teachings,who actually decreed this nonsense?
No sex before marriage,”living in sin”etc,no contrception;can I have the New Testament references for this?
The Catholic Church requires to focus itself on the real,criminal sexual acts perpetrated against defenceless children which they have the world over attempted to conceal(we are still at the very tip of the tip of the iceberg in relation to this)
Sexually abusing a child is a crime and ,undoubtedly a sin,masturbation is neither
The Church has no right at all to moralise,get your house in order.

Neville, I too was bemused. Hence the comment which I added. I think you may be interested to read Margaret Farley’s book: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. She goes a bit too far, in my opinion, but at least she is asking the right questions.
God bless.

May your tribe increase Fr. Stephen Wang for having the proper perspective on celibacy and constantly living it out in all its entirety as a faithful servant of God…in its profound meaning and the highest privilege to be called as Priest of Jesus Christ….as you have aptly said “It was a way of loving others with a generosity that wouldn’t be possible if you were a husband and father. Celibacy wasn’t a negation or a denial – it was a gift of love, a giving of oneself, just as much as marriage could be.” You’ve been blessed with such gift of discernment and wisdom from the Holy Spirit to clearly see the immeasurable privilege, value and true freedom you have to be a true Servant of God in practicing celibacy. More blessings and peace for you, Father!Say It With God’s Word

About this blog

Looking across the landscape of contemporary culture - at the arts, science, religion, politics, philosophy; sorting through the jumble; seeing what stands out, what unsettles, what intrigues, what connects, what sheds light. Father Stephen Wang is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Westminster, London. He is currently Senior University Chaplain, based at Newman House Catholic Chaplaincy. [Banner photo with kind permission of Matthew Powell]

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